where roses deck the flowery vale
by prittyspeshul
Summary: Tables are turned and Emma's the one left out in the cold. [play on elements of traditional Snow Queen myth]
1. Roses

_A/N: _Title quote is from the The Snow Queen by Andersen-the song Gerda sings to her love, Kai. Plot elements based on a more traditional take on The Snow Queen myth; in it, she makes the boy forget about his love for Gerda with a kiss. What if Sarah caused Hook to forget about Emma?

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><p><em>"Well, love, you don't have to worry about me. The one thing I'm good at is surviving."<br>_

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><p>This was what it felt like. The crumbling sensation of the floor beneath her, the deep black pit in her chest where her heart had once been—<em>was this what Regina had felt once, twice, with Daniel and then with Robin<em>, and Emma hated herself again for the thought and for the pain she had caused—the twist and pull in her lower abdomen that made her want to reach out and touch, touch, hold the beautiful, utterly blank face before her.

"I'm sorry, lass, are you alright?" The dark eyes were concerned, but it wasn't the deep sweet gentle pervasive concern of her Killian, the one who always knew when something was wrong and who always made her smile even when she broke down and cried and who she had let behind the walls and oh, no, oh no oh no she was not going to do that right now, she was not going to cry, not right now, not in front of him.

This… new Killian.

David had found him, wandering around the ice wall, clearly confused and nearly hypothermic. He had rushed him back to the sheriff's station and Emma had nearly flown to his side, but he was swaddled in blankets, holding a mug of something, and she knew there was something wrong the second he looked up at her, eyes wide and innocent, and asked, "Mate, who's this?"

David met her eyes and his look was pained, and Emma fought to hold her mask in place.

This is what it felt like when you loved someone and they looked right through you, unknowing, uncaring, or worse, gently concerned or mildly interested. This was what she had felt with her mother, back in the Enchanted Forest, disguised as Leia; this is what she had put her parents through time and time and time again after the first curse had broken; this is what she had put him through, in Neverland, in New York, even after she had come back to Storybrooke.

_So, really_, the dark part of her whispered, _it's only fair_.

But he was waiting for an answer, looking at her with those liquid dark eyes, beautiful but blank, so she mustered her best smile and murmured, "I was expecting someone else."

It wasn't a total lie.

David slid an arm around her shoulders and squeezed, but He was still looking at her and it stung, burned like wrapping salted hands around an ice cube, so Emma broke the embrace and attempted a business-like demeanor.

"David, if you wouldn't mind, take this man—"

"Killian," was the quiet insert, and her breath caught, but she steadied herself by turning away and shuffling some papers on her desk in what she hoped was a convincing manner.

"—take Killian to Granny's and get him settled in a room. Please." She turned and her mask was intact, a small smile plastered to her mouth. The man on the chair—she refused, refused, refused to give him that name—looked at her, and his mouth wrinkled a little, almost as though he were going to protest, or maybe to say something about the falseness of her expression, but he was swept up by David who blessedly started babbling about Storybrooke and freak weather events and heaven knows else.

Then the door slammed shut, and Emma crumpled, bringing her face to her knees once she was safely in the fetal position on the floor.

"You promised," she whispered, and then the tears came, and for once she let them overwhelm her.


	2. Bae

A/N: Originally, "roses" was supposed to a one-shot. But after re-reading the myth, I decided it would be more fun to stretch it out into 3 or 4 parts. :D Also, I have a doozy of a shift at work tomorrow, so I'm posting this early.

The inspiration for this chapter was the captive reindeer that carries Gerda to Lapland: Bae.

Yes. Seriously. Check out the wikipedia page.

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><p>Emma had no idea why she had wandered here, of all places.<p>

It wasn't that she was afraid of the dark (no, that had been shaken out of her by her second or third foster home) or even of the graveyard (there were far, far scarier things than dead people, like living ones). It just made no sense that she had ended up here. There were too many people she knew and cared about resting here, even though her tenure in Storybrooke had been relatively short. And though she and Regina had forged a tentative alliance (she dared even hope that maybe it could be a friendship, once the simmering rage she knew was still there dissipated a little more), Emma was trying to avoid the mausoleum where Regina still holed herself up the majority of the time. Give her a little space in the hope of easing the tension faster.

Still, something in her subconscious had led her here, and so she crunched on through the crisp layer of leaves and frosted grass, tightening her coat. She'd dealt with enough snow and ice and cold for a lifetime in the cave-in, but with the current trend of villainy she doubted the town would get warmer weather anytime soon.

Emma realized where she was too late. The clearing, the footprints, the (relatively) freshly disturbed earth—she reeled back as though she'd been slapped.

Neal's grave.

This place was off-limits. Too much fresh pain and old pain and healed wounds that had been ripped open only to be bandaged up then ripped open again. In short order, she'd found him, lost him, found him again, lost him again (mercifully along with her memories), found him once more, and lost him again, this time for good.

That was too much for anyone, even for her, especially for her. Because now that Henry was growing, she had a walking, talking reminder of what she and Neal had shared, and hell if that boy didn't look just damn like his father (with a little more of her good looks thrown in), and she knew Killian had to see it too and that was yet another pain she had to endure, knowing that Killian felt responsible for what had happened and seeing the recognition and hurt in his eyes when Henry would do something just like the little boy that he had known.

And now she'd lost Killian too.

She didn't realize she had kneeled until she felt the wetness spreading along the knees of her pants, spreading goosebumps up and down her legs as it soaked through to her skin. Emma just sat for a moment, rocking a little, feeling like a fool.

"Neal," finally, the word came out, feeling leaden with the weight of sadness and remorse and whatcouldhavebeen, and then the words wouldn't stop coming. "Neal, I don't know what to do. And you always did. I was a stupid kid, I believed you knew, even if you didn't. And… and, god, Neal, Henry looks so much like you sometimes it hurts to look at him, because even though I know it wasn't completely your fault I'm still so angry."

There was wetness on her face now, and she was really sick of crying because it had happened at least three times in the past week and this was so unlike her, but maybe that was okay because she was melting, and maybe it was finally okay to.

"I know why you left the first time. But, damn it, Neal—how dare you do it again."

She paused to inhale, sticky dirt on her hands and when had she leaned forward, why was she looking at the ground. When she spoke again, it was almost a whisper.

"Neal, I don't know what to do."

_And I don't want to lose him too_.

There was no answer. She hadn't expected one, but still something inside of her had hoped. The tiny part that she had thought was long gone, but Henry had unearthed, and Graham had pulled from the ground, and Neal had dusted off and deposited gently in Killian's waiting hands, had hoped that maybe _just maybe_ something would click.

She stood up with a sigh, trying and failing to rub the dirt from her pants, feeling like an even bigger fool for the tears on her face, when something crunched under her foot. Not crunched like the snow, but cracked, almost like—

Glass?

Emma knelt and picked up a shard, shaking it free of the mud that clung to it. It felt heavy, though it was a single piece, and something about it felt familiar. She dug into the snow around it, finally catching hold of something solid and metal. Her breath caught as she pulled it free of the muck.

Killian's compass.

She couldn't quite put her finger on why she had come here, but because of doing so, she now had a literal direction.

She turned back to the headstone and smiled. "Thank you."

She didn't see, as she turned away, the shadow across the headstones, nor did she see the figure with the cane disappear into the trees.


	3. Evigheden

A/N: Conclusion!

The title inspiration this time comes from when Gerda finds Kai on the Snow Queen's lake, trying to spell out "eternity" (evigheden in Danish) in splinters of ice as part of deal with the Snow Queen to win his freedom. When she melts his heart, they dance and the pieces are caught up in the dance; when they tire of dancing, the pieces fall down to form the word.

The Snow Queen is actually a beautiful myth. You should check it out. After reading this. Of course.

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><p>It was the cruelest punishment. With no exaggeration, nothing that Emma had done to steel herself prepared her in the least to see him, her beautiful pirate, in that awful white gown. She'd avoided it for weeks, begging off visits to the hospital with work on the cases (Snow Queen and library vandalthief/liar to the mayor).

But now, with the Queen defeated, the vandal mysteriously vanished, she had no excuses left, and her mother had practically dragged her to the ward.

He was smiling, in the midst of telling some story or other to the rest of the patients, gesturing with his hook. It hurt too much to look at him, almost too much to be here, but she willed herself to keep going forward, _just talk to him_, Snow had begged, _he's in there, he's in there as much as Charming was when he was in the coma_. Emma had fought, argued, even thrown a tantrum like a child (in her mind, thank you very much, she was an adult), but in the end the recognized pain in her mother's eyes and her father's soft _He looks for you_ was what had sent her through the door.

One of the others looked over at her, and so he turned, dropping his story in the middle. His eyes lit up, and for a split second she saw him, her Killian and _David was right, he was looking for me_, but then a confused storm welled up and took the recognition from his eyes. But he was still happy to see her, even if he had no idea why, and _so much like a puppy_ he bounced eagerly out of his seat to rush over and take her hand with a flourish.

"My lady sheriff," he announced, bowing deeply, and the rest of the patients giggled a little. It was clear he worked his charismatic magic here, so at least the witch had left his personality intact. Emma wasn't sure if that was the twinge that went through her, or if it was because his hand was so cold. "David told me you might be paying a visit to talk to me about the events of my forgetfulness."

She bit through the thickness in her throat to manage, "Yes. If you don't mind, I'd prefer to do it in private?"

Another giggle went through the crowd, and Killian turned to wink and wiggle his eyebrows suggestively. "Absolutely, lass. Anything for the prettiest lady in the room." A round of sighs and more giggling followed them down the hall.

He, ever the gentleman, allowed her to enter the room first, before following her and closing the door. It was a dismal little room, sterile and white like every hospital room, decorated like every hospital room or maybe nursing home: bed, night stand, bookshelf with the Classics no one actually read, small table and two chairs against the only window. She moved towards the light, hoping to put some distance between herself and Him, but he followed right after.

"So? Did you discover anything? Find out why I don't remember anything?"

It was just like David, to feed him a lie and not tell her a single thing about it. "Um, well, we found a woman, who we think is responsible." Not a total lie, but concealed enough.

"A woman?"

"Her name is Sarah. Sarah Fischer. Does the name ring a bell?"

She turned to look at him, for just a second, figuring she could handle that, but his brow was furrowed in concentration and out of the brightness of the "gathering area" and the adoring attention of the crowd, he looked positively forlorn. "Sarah Fischer… Sarah… snow… I…"

Suddenly, violently, he moved toward the window—the other side of the table, thankfully, though he brushed her hand as he passed by and oh, how she wanted to gather him in her arms and hold him—and slammed his hand down on it, rattling the pieces of a puzzle strewn there and knocking a few of them to the floor. It was one of those distraction activities, "measuring your progress" but really it only kept you busy for a quarter of an hour so the nurses could deal with the screaming patient down the hall. Emma knelt to collect the fallen pieces.

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have done that. I just… I get so frustrated. I feel so close to knowing something, and then it slips away again and I'm more lost than I was before because now I'm trying to grasp the feeling of trying to remember at all. Like when I see you. I feel like I know you, sheriff. And no one will say anything about it, but I know that it's true. Is it true?"

He turned back from the window to find her carefully fitting the pieces of the puzzle back together, her fingers trembling a little, but maybe he was just imagining that. "It's such a stupid thing, I must have been trying to put together that stupid puzzle ever since I've been here, but every time I get to close to finishing it I just can't focus, or I find the pieces are all wrong and I have to take it apart and start over. Guess I'm more broken than I thought. "

When she looked up at him, her eyes were filled with tears, and her lip was quivering, and oh, Killian, Killian, Killian, "Killian," the word finally burst forth in a half-sob half-desperate plea, _come back to me_ and she grabbed for him, pulling him close and burying her face in his neck, understanding that he would have no idea what was going on but just maybe, like his attempt at the kiss in New York, maybe maybe maybe it was worth a shot and if her mother was right and he was in there somewhere maybe, but even if not he still looked like her Killian and felt like her Killian and right now that was the only thing keeping her on her feet.

It took her a moment more of ugly, loud sobbing to gain control of herself, but when she did and tried to pull back, she found his arms wrapped around her holding her pinned _crushed_ against him, and she realized her hair was damp, and salt was dripping down her forehead and she pulled back and somehow she knew.

His mouth crashed into hers, in a heady disorientating fraught attempt to fill the void of hours, days, weeks of not touching her, not seeing her, not knowing her, and she didn't know whether they both were crying or it was just the leftovers of a pathetic breakdown on her part but at the moment she didn't care because _he was here_.

"You came back," she whispered, raggedly, still pressed against him, still clutching him to her like a sailor drowning, and wasn't that just appropriate she thought, because she had been drowning with her Captain.

"I will always come back," and he kissed her again, and everything was right again, in a way it hadn't been since that night in the sheriff's station.

They curled up on his bed, just soaking each other in, the completed puzzle, a picture of a swan in a crown, forgotten on the table.


End file.
